und Sozialwissenschaften Alfred-Weber-Institut für Wirtschaf

157 Pages·2015·1.29 MB·German

Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Fakultät für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften
Alfred-Weber-Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaften

Smarandita Ceccato

ECONOMIC DECISION-MAKING UNDER CHRONIC STRESS:
BEHAVIORAL AND PSYCHOENDOCRINOLOGICAL ASPECTS
Dissertationsschrift zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades
Betreuerin: Prof. Dr. Christiane Sc hwieren

Februar 2015

DEDICATION

To Marcel and Maya, for existing.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Over the past years I travelled a thoughtful and rewarding journey, where I received
support, supervision, and encouragement from a handful of great people. They have
generously shared their time and ideas. First and foremost, Prof. Christiane Schwieren has
trusted me to complete this study and stood by when I stumbled. She has offered me the
freedom to discover, the opportunity to grow, and the chance to learn to tell my scientific
stories to the world. I hope she has not been disappointed.
Prof. Brigitte M. Kudielka has been the fastest, kindest and most thorough
proofreader. I am grateful to her for sharing her deep domain expertise, but also for her
patience, time, and encouragements. Prof. Åse Marie Hansen has been near me and
provided much needed uplifting and insights throughout the most stressful period of my life.
I am much obliged to her and hope to repay her in an equally selfless fashion.
I would also like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under
research grant number SCHW1537/1-1 for financially supporting the research presented in
this thesis.
Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to the two best stress buffers in the world: Marcel
and Maya, my family. Unfortunately, they are scientifically nonreplicable.

Table of Contents

Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 
References ............................................................................................................................ 3 
Background .............................................................................................................................. 5 
References ............................................................................................................................ 8 
Chronic Stress Is Positively Related to Risk-Taking in Young Adults ................................. 11 
Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 11 
1  Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 12 
2  Literature ......................................................................................................................... 14 
3  Hypotheses ...................................................................................................................... 19 
4  Experimental Design ....................................................................................................... 19 
4.1  The task .................................................................................................................... 19 
4.2  Procedure .................................................................................................................. 23 
4.3  Participants ............................................................................................................... 24 
4.4  Control variables ...................................................................................................... 24 
4.5  The chronic stress measure ...................................................................................... 25 
4.6  The hair cortisol measure ......................................................................................... 26 
4.7  Statistical analysis .................................................................................................... 26 
5  Results ............................................................................................................................. 26 
5.1  Chronic stress is positively associated with risk-taking ........................................... 26 
5.2  Chronic cortisol exposure is not associated with risk-taking or perceived chronic
stress ..................................................................................................................................30 
5.3  At trend levels, women report higher TICS levels than men ................................... 30 
5.4  Women take significantly less risk than men ........................................................... 31 
5.5  Chronic stress is positively related to risk-taking in young adults........................... 33 
6  Discussion ....................................................................................................................... 36 
7  Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 41 
References .......................................................................................................................... 42 
Appendix ............................................................................................................................ 53 
Real and Hypothetical Social Decision-Making under Chronic Stress: ................................ 63 
Women Talk the Talk, but Don’t Walk the Walk; Men Walk the Talk ................................ 63 
Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 63
1  Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 64 
2  Literature ......................................................................................................................... 66 
3  Hypotheses ...................................................................................................................... 71 
4  Experimental Design ....................................................................................................... 72 
4.1  Procedure .................................................................................................................. 72 
4.2  The chronic stress measure ...................................................................................... 74 
4.3  Control variables ...................................................................................................... 75 
4.4  Participants ............................................................................................................... 75 
4.5  Statistical analysis .................................................................................................... 76 
5  Results ............................................................................................................................. 76 
5.1  Chronic stress is only related to women’s hypothetical transfers ............................ 76 
5.2  Women talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk; men walk the talk .......................... 81 
6  Discussion ....................................................................................................................... 84 
7  Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 89 
References .......................................................................................................................... 90 
Appendix ............................................................................................................................ 98 
Gender-Pairing and Framing Matter in Social Decision-Making ....................................... 117 
Abstract ................................................................................................................................ 117 
1  Introduction ................................................................................................................... 118 
2  Literature ....................................................................................................................... 119 
3  Experimental Design ..................................................................................................... 121 
3.1  Design .................................................................................................................... 121 
3.2  Implementation ...................................................................................................... 123 
4  Hypotheses .................................................................................................................... 125 
5  Results ........................................................................................................................... 125 
5.1  Average amount transferred and frequency of non-zero transfers ......................... 125 
5.2  Treatment comparisons and interaction effects ..................................................... 126 
5.3  Regression Analysis ............................................................................................... 130 
6  Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 134 
References ........................................................................................................................ 135 
Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 138 
Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................................... 146
Introduction

Stress has become a prominent topic in the recent years, both in scientific research and
media talking points. This is no surprise, since more and more surveys underline the fact that it is an
increasing presence in the life of a growing part of the population and more and more research
confirms that prolonged stress alters body- and possibly mental-functioning, being a precursor of
serious disease (McEwen, 2004; McEwen, 2007). While the scientific evidence concerning the
physiological effects of prolonged stress is continuously blooming, that concerning the effects it
might have on cognitive mechanisms, higher-order cognition, behavior and decision-making
processes is very restricted. Yet, considering that stress is a universal response and its chronicity
potentially impacts a significant part of the population who must take private and professional
optimal decisions, it is paramount to understand if and how chronic stress impacts individual and
social decision-making.
This inquiry is intrinsically important, irrespective of economic cycles, because stress occurs
indiscriminately and it is now established that decision makers’ rationality is biased and potentially
subject to psychological and physiological influences (Camerer, 1998; Glimcher and Fehr, 2013).
However, this interrogation becomes especially relevant in times of economic crisis, when stressors
multiply (see APA reports below or Faresjö et al., 2013) and, more than ever, optimal decision-
making is necessary to rationally utilize or divide resources and derive the greatest possible benefit
for both self and society as a whole.
Throughout the outbreak of the recent economic crisis, the American Psychological
Association’s yearly report, “Stress in America”, highlighted the fact that stress is on the rise and
that chronic stress is becoming a public health problem not only for adults, but also for teenagers
and smaller children (Anderson et al., 2010; Anderson et al., 2012; APA, 2011; APA, 2013; APA,
2014; APA, 2015). The main stressors individuals identified were money and finances, but, despite
this burden, emotional support was singled out as a potentially efficient stress buffer. However,
reports focusing on stress management strategies determined that, most often, individuals will
accelerate the damaging effects that chronic stress has on health by making poor dietary choices or
adopting high-risk behaviors like smoking, drinking, or inactivity (for instance in APA, 2007). And,
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worth noting further, even though the problems created by prolonged stress appear to be universal
and range so far as to degrade social relationships (APA, 2007), there is a gender difference in
stress perception, with women reporting higher stress levels and more stress-specific physical and
psychological symptoms than men.
In brief, these recent yearly reports underlined the fact that people seem to take poor
decisions under stress, and the one stress buffer that might function well, social support, is itself
affected by stress. Further, stress appears to be chiefly caused by one´s financial situation and it
appears to bear stronger on women than on men. Decisions, therefore, and, pertinent in everyday
life and mostly during a crisis, financial decisions, are being taken under stress by a growing
fraction of the population. These survey findings open two main experimental research avenues that
are up-to-date unexplored: they indicate that stress might impact genders, with different
magnitudes, by hindering one’s ability to weigh risks and benefits, and that stress could ram the
way that social relationships are perceived, nourished, and thus valued. It is precisely this the aim of
the present thesis: to initiate experimental research on chronic stress, higher-order cognition and
behavior, by deriving a bird´s eye view over gender-specific decision-making and social
preferences under chronic stress in financially-motivated behaviors.
The investigation will be initiated by shedding light on decision-making in uncertain
contexts. The first study presents a standard risk-taking paradigm (for instance, similar to Buckert et
al., 2014) and investigates if, and to what extent, perceived and biologically measured chronic stress
affects women´s and men´s risk-taking. This is especially relevant since everyday decisions often
have uncertain outcomes and are themselves the exit route from problematic physiological and
psychological states. Furthermore, since money is a source of stress, the object of many decisions,
and a mean of improving one’s current state, financial risk-taking will be experimentally employed
as a reliable, relevant model for general, motivation-driven decision-making.
The second research avenue, concerning if and how social preferences per se are affected by
chronic stress, will then be approached and examined. In the second study, the biological measure
of stress is abandoned, since, as revealed in the first study, there is a misalignment between the two
types of measures and they might therefore reflect different concepts and determine related, yet
distinctive mechanisms. Until further research clarifies the golden standard for the biological
assessment of chronic stress, the main aim of this thesis is pursued with a validated, self-reported
measure: social preferences are evaluated under perceived chronic stress in a well-established social
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